The dark corner of South Carolina

ANDERSON COUNTY - Over the course of the Civil War’s five bloody years, almost as many Confederate soldiers deserted as were killed in battle.

And in South Carolina, the place they came to was the Upstate.

Most historians agree South Carolina was loyal to the Confederate cause. In his book, “South Carolina,” Walter Edgar noted that the state had only 60,000 males listed as being of military age. But conscription records from 1864 show that 60,127 men fought for the cause from the state.

In contrast, according to William Price’s book “The Civil War Handbook,” an estimated 83,400 Confederate soldiers deserted during the war, while 94,000 were killed in battle.

Some estimates put the number of deserters in the Confederacy as high as 103,000 enlisted men, and more than 1,000 officers.

In contrast, some documents show desertions in the Union Army were as high as 199,000 men. Historians say Union men were paid a bounty of $30 to sign up as a soldier. Many, they say, served for a few weeks or months, deserted, and then signed up with another unit to get another $30 bounty.

Many Confederate deserters came to the Upstate. Whether it was because it was their home or because the mountainous terrain afforded a place to disappear, this area became known as the state’s “Dark Corner.”

Anderson, Oconee, Pickens and Greenville were counties with independent men who defied the conscription of soldiers, according to A.V. Huff Jr., a retired Furman University history professor. Early on, Union sentiment ran high in the area, starting with Benjamin Perry, who was born in Oconee County and wrote in favor of the Union while editor of the Greenville Mountaineer.

The area was also populated by fiercely independent Irish and Scottish immigrants who took a dim view of authority, Huff said. Many grumbled about rich men buying their way out of service. Many men joined the battle not for any political point of view, but because of a desire to defend their homes.

“One of the common expressions among the common soldiers was ‘rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.’ There was some bitterness in the fact that ordinary people were dragged into this, not because of any feeling about state’s rights or that they were defending anything except … defending their homes,” he said.

As the war dragged on, getting the soldiers needed to fight for the Confederacy became harder and harder.

“By 1863, as the war seemed to become interminable and the state joined with the Confederate government in tightening conscription laws, exemptions disappeared and resistance became open and violent, especially in the northwestern portion of the state,” wrote W. Scott Poole in his book “South Carolina’s Civil War.” “Often dubbed ‘the Dark Corner’ … (the area) became a refuge for resisters.”

In the Upstate, as many as 500 men who resisted conscription were listed as “skulkers” or “deserters” who used the Upstate’s topography and traditional community relations to resist service in the Confederate ranks, he wrote.

“Traveling together in bands of 20 to 30 men, they worked out a system that included both common labor and defense,” Poole wrote in his book “South Carolina’s Civil War.” “Relying on the protection of kin and community, who largely seemed to have found resistance to conscription laudable by 1863, resisters moved from farm to farm working one another’s land. Taking care to prepare for defense of their freedom and their lives should Confederate forces move against them, many of the bands used skills they had actually learned from their short time in the Confederate army to construct defensive positions in the sparsely populated and mountainous region. Jones Gap, Hogback Mountain, Table Rock, Caesars Head and Potts Camp all became fortified positions.”

Camp conditions, illness and the realities of war sent people packing for home.

“Our recollections of camp duty are most unsavory,” wrote one soldier in his memories of the war. “It was pitched in an undrained field, where a part of East Summerville now is, which the rains had supplied with a running stream in the middle and slimy mud all over, and naturally we had much sickness… Here, too, on the 10th three deserters were dishonorably discharged, one of whom was of feeble intellect, and the other two were drummed out,” as the diary says “marched in front of the regiment, drawn up in line, from the right to the left, followed by a corporal and two privates with fixed bayonets and a drummer and fife, playing a pitiful tune.”

Deserters headed to the Upstate for shelter. The woods, rural area and the mountains, gave the deserters plenty of places to hide.

“There was one group of soldier people who had enlisted in the Confederate Army, many being from Greenville, whose regiment was stationed in Charleston,” Huff said. “In 1863, the unit was being transferred to defend Vicksburg… From the time the train left Charleston to the time it got to Vicksburg, about half of those from Greenville had gotten off the train and headed back to Greenville County.”

Residents knew they were there and hid the deserters, Huff said. Eventually, a movement came from the Army officers to do something about it.

“Col. John Ashmore, who was in charge of the Fourth South Carolina Regiment at the time, announced that he would come and arrest them,” Huff said. “But according to the stories, they got hold of some munitions and, using some of the skills they had learned in the military, built a stockade in Gallonsville to protect themselves. They sent word to Col. Ashmore to come get them.”

As the war dragged on, the South desperately needed men. In Oconee County, a brigade was formed near Tunnel Hill, whose sole duty was to hunt down and arrest deserters and those who had “overstayed their furloughs.”

But the number of “deserters,” Huff said, can be misleading.

“Those figures can be very, very deceiving. My great grandfather was in the Confederate Army and he’s listed as having deserted four times,” Huff said. “They were in the army and they would leave in the spring to go plant. They would come back home and do the planting and go back to the battlefield.”

“Well, if they deserted on the battle front, that was different — then they were imprisoned or shot. But these folks who left informally and came back, this was just part of the rhythm of fighting,” Huff said.

Many were ill-prepared for what war was really like, he said.

“At the beginning, the Civil War was, for most young people, a great adventure. And the reality of killing and the reality of death and the horrors of the battlefield was something very few of them had counted on,” Huff said. “The only military experience many had was the Mexican American war and that was the 1840s…. many of them were the officers by the time the Civil War came about.”

But for most, as the war dragged on the toll on those left behind was too great. Mothers, wives and sisters, left to run farms without fathers, husbands, brothers or uncles, ran the risk of ruin or being overrun by Union forces. Many soldiers simply felt their duty had been done, and went home, according to Poole.

“Until recently, historians of the Confederate South glossed over the frequency of desertion and white resistance in the Civil War,” Poole wrote. “Ironically, those who resisted the Confederate authorities may have been the very men who took the ruling class’s political rhetoric about the defense of white men’s home and liberty most seriously. Home, region and individual freedom held their deepest loyalties and into these spheres they would brook no incursion.”